After the Before
by Mission to Marzipan
Summary: A collection of oneshots mostly set after major events in demigods' lives, some canon, some not. The main events in demigod life get the most attention (battles lost and won, monsters defeated, Titans/Giants put back in their place) but these oneshots will just be kind of what happens next, when the cameras have stopped rolling on all of that. Demigods are half-human, after all.
1. Making Fragments Whole

**Hello all.**

**Probably not the update many were hoping for... sorry about that. Basically, although I have a lot of PJO stories posted, what actually makes it to this website is just the very tip of a gargantuan iceberg. I have a notebook full of oneshots and so many files of unfinished ideas on my computer which... are mostly terribe but this marks me trying to fix that. **

**This fic, _After the Before_, is going to be a collection of oneshots which generally occur _after _serious events in demigod life because that's where most of my 'archive' seem to be set when I read it back. People focus on the main events in demigod life, the battles lost and won, friendships made and broken, news that breaks hearts and causes them to soar, but these oneshots will be just kind of what happens after all of that. After the cameras have stopped rolling, almost.  
**

**Some events will be focusing on what happens after 'real' (i.e. canonical) events while some (probably most) will be what goes on after events of my own choosing. Most are sad, because I have a penchant for angst (if you don't know that then, well, you'll soon find out) but I'm going to start on a happy note and intersperse this with happy oneshots.  
**

**The oneshots will not be related and they will not happen chronologically; nor will they necessarily happen in the same timeline. They will be self-contained — if I kill a character in one chapter and they turn up in the next, that's why.  
**

**I'm working on these to ease myself back into writing again, to keep my hand in, in the hope that it inspires another chapter of IOGU to kind of organically flow. I'm trying to cure writer's block (by which I mean I've been fleeing from IOGU screaming because I've launched myself into a void without any sense of direction — there are those who may be reading this who will be dying to tell me they told me so). I have a lot of these written (or nearly written) so expect at least the first four to six chapter to come semi-regularly. **

**No point in letting all of these clutter up the PJO folder on my hard drive is my reasoning (yes, I'm that anal with my digital housekeeping) so, once I'm done laughing at how terrible I am at this and trying to fix what a mess I've written, I'm hoping to have a reasonable collection here.  
**

**So, here we are. My crazy ramblings open to the world. May the gods help us all.**

**Marzipan.**

* * *

**Chapter One: Making Fragments Whole  
**

**Characters:**

**Percy**

**Annabeth**

**Rachel**

**Nico**

* * *

"Design a sunroom," Annabeth muttered bitterly to herself, giving a savage jerk of the broom in her hands. "It will be a wonderful addition to the house. Think how much light it will let into the dining room…"

Sighing, she looked down at the mess of stained glass shards at her feet. She swept stuff like this up all the freaking time and she was getting sick of it. It was almost as if monsters didn't want them to have nice things.

There was a headache building behind her eyes and she paused in her sweeping, leaning on the broom and pinching the bridge of her nose. _Why_, when she had designed her and Percy's marital home, had she thought that a sunroom would be a good idea? Sure, the room looked wonderful, filled as it was with wicker furniture and plants yes, it did allow light to spill into the rest of the house beyond but really? All of this stained glass? What had she been _thinking_?

Her dad, after taking a sabbatical from West Point to write a book about America's involvement in World War I, had somewhat inadvertently written a historical fiction novel at the same time which had netted more sales than his non-fiction work could have hoped for. He had received a fairly large advance for a series of books on the same topic, enough to purchase Annabeth and Percy a dilapidated cottage just outside Stamford, Connecticut as a wedding gift. The cottage had previously belonged to one of the large houses on the beach but had since been separated into a sizeable plot of its own, overlooking Stamford Harbour right on the shore of the Long Island Sound.

The location couldn't be better; Annabeth had to wonder how much of the location was down to Poseidon wanting Percy to have somewhere by the sea because she wasn't sure that her father's book advance could have covered buying real estate in a relatively exclusive area, not even a 5-years-away-from-tumbledown cottage.

They were only just over 30 miles from Manhattan by road or less than an hour by train for her commute into Manhattan. Being on the Long Island Sound meant that Percy could dive in and swim the length of Long Island to the easternmost tip and Camp when he needed to, or even sometimes when he just wanted the exercise (needless to say, Annabeth preferred to take the ferry from Bridgeport or New London).

Annabeth, bewitched by visions of sunrooms and gables and all manner of other architectural delights, had set about sending in the demolition crew for the cottage as soon as the ink was dry on the contract and had built a home on the plot. It was built long and low like the Poseidon cabin and the concrete that could be seen around the huge slabs of plate glass was white like the Athena cabin. The upper storey had wraparound windows that gave a panoramic view over the Sound and a balcony that ran the breadth of the front of the building.

After spending much of her life in San Francisco or New York City, Annabeth had found it a little weird at first to be removed from the hustle and bustle of city living, but you couldn't exactly build your dream home in Manhattan, what with the slight lack of vacant lots available for that purpose. She could cope with being a little out of the way just for the view she'd had to work with when designing the house and all the space.

The sunroom was at the rear of the house; almost the entire back of the building opened up into a pitched roof of glass and steel. The kitchen was the only room at the back of the house that didn't open onto the sunroom: Annabeth had been keen to make sure that company, should she have it, wouldn't be able to see her burning food and hurriedly thrusting microwave meals in at the last second. The sunroom was shaped like half an octagon, with each of the sides featuring panes of clear glass surrounded by a mosaic of smaller, coloured panes. Many of them had been shattered by telekhines and their freaking harpoon guns in the battle that was still ringing in her ears.

The coloured shards tinkled as she swept them into a pile. She was already on first-name terms with half the glaziers in the area and she thought that they were all getting suspicious of the number of times that they had been called to the house.

There were only so many callouts Annabeth could attribute to her or Percy's clumsiness, especially given that by the time either of them was in any fit state to call a glazier all of the cuts had been healed by nectar and ambrosia, which really ruined the alibi.

She crouched, mechanically looping hair which had escaped from her bun behind her ear as she did so. As she reached for the dustpan, the fragments of glass glimmered up at her from the white tile; the overhead light sparkled on her wedding and engagement rings. At twenty-six, she had swept up far too many windows (and been thrown through far too many as well). It just felt like it should be someone else's go, that was all, to have to deal with all of this stuff. Was it selfish to expect the next generation to take over from her and Percy so they could get five minutes of peace?

Wasn't it Nico or Thalia or Jason's _turn_ to jump in and kill the Minotaur when he resurfaced on Half-Blood Hill, _especially _given that she'd just opened a bottle of champagne for her and Percy's anniversary and was wearing some damn expensive underwear?

When Percy had come back covered in blood and mud Annabeth had drunk half the champagne and the rest was flat. Percy was no longer in the mood to say the least and Annabeth had discovered that there was a reason underwear of the type she had bought was made so people would want to rip it off — loafing around in it was just too damn uncomfortable (who knew that underwiring doubled as a torture device?) If Percy's mood wasn't already killed, coming home to her dressed in holey sweats would have done it anyway. She should have gone with Percy, but he had said he could handle it and wouldn't be long and so…

They hadn't even been able to get through their _wedding _without having to kill something. The demigod guests all congregated together had proved a magnet for monsters but Annabeth had at least got to justify the tearaway skirts she had insisted the seamstress put into her wedding dress, much to the bemused woman's chagrin.

"What do you want me to do with this?" Percy asked, coming into the sunroom with several pieces of blue vase in his hand.

Annabeth turned robotically, blinking at her husband. Percy was bleary and out of focus; clearly, her eyes were as tired as the rest of her. She looked at the fragments and the weight of the sky slammed down onto her all over again.

"Toss it," she said shortly, pointing vaguely at the metal trashcan in the centre of the room. "I don't know why I don't just buy plastic ones."

"Are you sure?" Percy said. "Because I think maybe I could glue it…"

"What did the nurse in the ER say the last time you broke out the glue and stuck your fingers together?" Annabeth asked pointedly.

Percy winced at the memory, crossed the room and dumped the pieces of vase in the trash.

"Maybe Rachel could make us a new one?" Percy said helpfully. "I mean, she's been dying to use that kiln she just had installed for a reason I'm sure made sense to her at the time."

Annabeth grunted. "I'll just stick with plastic from now on," she said. "Safer."

"Hey, are you okay?" Percy asked, concern creasing his features. "You've been… quiet."

"I'm just _peachy_," Annabeth bit out, rattling her dustpan full of glass exaggeratedly at him as she lurched to her feet and stormed over to the bin to dump out the shards with the cacophony of a glass landslide. The metal of the can rang with the noise long after the shards had finished falling. "I mean, who _wouldn't_ look forward to vacuuming forty times a day for the next six months and _still _finding little tiny splinters of glass to stand on in bare feet? You're telling me that's not your idea of _fun_?"

Percy bit his lip. "Is this about the vase?"

Annabeth softened guiltily, her body sagging. She let the dustpan fall to the floor uncaringly, closing her eyes and using the forearm she was still clutching the brush with to shove back her bangs. "No, it's not about the vase," she said quietly. "It's just a stupid vase. I'm sorry, Percy. This isn't about you at all. I don't mean to take it out on you. None of this is your fault, period. I love you and I don't know what I would do without you. I'm just so sick of…" She opened her eyes; they darted around the sunroom and rested on a wicker chair impaled by a spear. "_This_," she said savagely, seizing the back of the chair. She gave it a gentle wiggle and watched it lurch drunkenly to separate from the base.

Percy sighed. "We made it like a month this time," he said.

"Twenty-four days," Annabeth corrected automatically.

Percy rolled his eyes at her ability to be so precise when she was so upset and wrested the brush from her grasp despite her reluctance and muttered curses. He tossed it to the side and snatched her towards him. She resisted at first but by the time he'd got his chin on the top of her head she was hugging him back.

"Fine. _Almost _a month," Percy conceded, planting a soft kiss on the top of her hair.

"I suck as a person," Annabeth grumbled into his (torn) shirt. "I shouldn't let this get to me. Having to buy plastic vases isn't a big deal. We're okay, alive — that's all the matters. It's just…" She broke off and scooted back a little so she could look Percy in the face without breaking the hug. "How many more windows? How many more vases? Sometimes, I just get tired. I can't be the only one, right?"

"Hey, you think I welcome monsters dropping in at all hours?" Percy said. "I'm as over this as you are. Especially with the mess all the glue made of my fingers. But we'll get through it, you know that, right? We always do. Together."

Annabeth nodded. "I know," she said. "I'm just _frustrated_ more than anything else. Plus… well I had to run away from home the last time monster attacks got this bad, this intrusive. I don't want to run away from this, Percy. From everything we have here, from this _house_… I don't want the monsters to evict us but every time this happens I start thinking maybe we should just buy an RV and live out life on the road."

Percy grinned lopsidedly, stepping back so she could get the full effect. "I've never had sex in an RV," he told her.

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "Dream. On," she said, poking him in the chest. "We're staying put."

"Fine," Percy said, extracting a laugh from Annabeth at his overly-petulant reaction to that assertion. "Fine. We just need to get the Hecate kids out here again to toss some more of their mumbo-jumbo around the place to renew their cloaking spell. I can send the IM now, if you want. It will be done before you know it," Percy said.

"Leave it," Annabeth wearily, sliding forwards towards Percy again and wrapping her arms around his waist. "It's not permanent, anyway. I wish they'd figure out some kind of lasting cloaking spell, but... IM them tomorrow. We've had marauding telekhines blow through here already. I'm not sure I'm up to anymore visitors."

"Knock knock," echoed a voice through the house.

"_Fuck_," Annabeth said, her forehead connecting with Percy's sternum. When she had the composure to re-emerge she was staring at Nico, who was sitting on top of the (askew) dining table kicking his legs merrily.

"Is that any way to greet an old friend?" Nico asked with a grin.

"Well, it's you," Annabeth said. "So yes. And I've told you before: saying 'knock knock' _after_ shadow travelling in doesn't count as actually knocking. You have to be _outside _for that."

"You want me to appear on the porch?" Nico asked, blinking at her. "What if the neighbours saw?"

"We're not overlooked," Annabeth said, cocking an eyebrow at him.

"What if it's cold?"

"Bring a sweater," Annabeth suggested stonily through gritted teeth, her voice edged in steel.

Nico wrinkled his noise. "_Pass,_" he said decisively.

The sound of drawers opening and closing and cutlery being rattled around inside them clamoured out of the kitchen and a shout echoed out, interrupting Annabeth's reply.

"Where do you guys keep your bottle opener?"

"You brought _Rachel_?" Annabeth said to Nico, her voice rising an octave.

"Use this!" Nico called, fishing a Swiss army knife out of his pocket and turning to toss it to his left, towards the kitchen and out of Annabeth and Percy's sight.

There was a thud.

"_Ow!"_

Nico winced. "She's the Oracle and yet she needs a heads up," he said to Percy and Annabeth. "I'm not the only one who finds that weird, right? And of course I brought her. She's the one who saw what went down here."

"I wasn't _ready_," Rachel protested, coming out of the kitchen with four open bottles of beer clutched in her hands.

"Again, Oracle," Nico said, jerking his thumb at her and giving Percy and Annabeth a sceptical look before relieving Rachel of a beer and taking a swig.

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "I suppose it's too much to hope you came to help with the clean up?"

"This is Nico," Rachel said, crossing the dining room and stepping over the threshold between that room and the sunroom. "Of course that's too much to hope. Have you seen his room?"

In what had to be an all-time winner of the most bizarre roommates award, Rachel and Nico actually managed to share an (albeit cavernous) apartment without killing each other. Annabeth had sneaking suspicions that there might be a little bit more going on than them simply being roommates, but she didn't think that either of them would be _that _stupid and besides, if she didn't know that kept her firmly out of the blast zone if Apollo chose to rain down fire upon the two of them.

Selfish, maybe. Practical? Oh_ gods _yes_. _

"Have you looked at your studio lately?" Nico shot back. "The one time I tried to organise your canvases to look a little bit less like a game of art Jenga you _freaked_."

"I had a _system_!" Rachel snorted, retracing what was obviously a familiar argument. "I couldn't find anything after you were done with it."

"You can't find anything now!" Nico sputtered indignantly. "All I did was try to impose just a little bit of order on your chaos but if you think you have a _system _then you believe that all you want." He paused to take another drink. "And besides, we are helping," he added, nodding to Annabeth. "We bought beer, didn't we?"

"Beer helps less than brooms," Annabeth said, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Whoa, hey, wait a minute there," Percy said quickly, moving towards Rachel and liberating the Oracle of two of the beers. "Let's not be too hasty. Beer helps plenty."

"And we ordered pizza for delivery," Rachel said. "I know how hungry monster fighting makes you guys and we thought it would probably be best to pick something that didn't need plates…"

Annabeth rounded on Percy. "What happened to my plates?" she demanded.

Percy pressed one of the beers into Annabeth's hand. "Telekhines," he said shortly. "But drink now," he advised, "bitch about crockery later."

"Fine," Annabeth said, her eyes narrowing still further. She looked down at her beer and took a thoughtful swig, closing her eyes as it went down. She hadn't realised how thirsty she was; maybe Percy was right and beer helped more than she thought. Not that she'd be telling anyone that.

"Told you," Nico crowed triumphantly, grinning lopsidedly at her.

Crap. Obviously, she needed to work on her poker face.

"Is totally environmentally irresponsible to just replace all of our crockery with paper versions?" Annabeth mused, choosing to ignore Nico (one generally had to, just to maintain some semblance of sanity). "I mean, the Amazon might bite it but we'd use the dishwasher less. That's got to save the icecaps and the polar bears, right? Does it balance out?"

"Don't let Juniper hear you talk about destroying the rainforest," Percy said darkly into his beer. "Not unless you want her to twist your ear off."

"What about _sustainable _paper plates?" Annabeth said. "You know, the ones made from bamboo fibre and stuff?"

"That would probably work," Percy said. "She really doesn't like bamboo. Like, not at all." He paused, his brows furrowing. "Do you think for her that's, like... racist?"

"Tree racism?" Annabeth asked sceptically.

"Sure, because _that's_ the weirdest thing that's happened to you today," Nico muttered. "Attacked by half dog, half baby, half sea lion things—"

"Three halves do not make a whole," Annabeth interrupted.

"Eat me," Nico returned smoothly. "My point is that you were attacked by dog, baby, sea lion things and you think tree racism is weird? In perspective, not so much, right?"

Annabeth opened her mouth to argue but then realised she'd be doing so just to be contrary and what Nico had said was pretty much true, so closed it again. "Fine," she said. "I take your point. So... how did you know we were getting attacked?"

Nico put his beer down on the table next to him (no coaster, Annabeth noted, with a flare of her nostrils) so he could throw up his hands. "Don't look at me; I'm not the one with a crystal ball for a skull."

"Do you want me to take this one or have you got it?" Annabeth asked Rachel.

Rachel blew air out through her lips. "I'm struggling," she said. "So many comebacks, so little time. I mean, do I go for the traditional, 'At least my skull isn't hollow'? Or something relating to the thickness of his skull? And that's not even going into the jokes I could make about his mental capacity. And on the knowing about you being attacked front, I didn't see it in time to stop it. I'm sorry. I just saw… this, pretty much. The aftermath."

"You know, I could just go down to the Underworld and drag back up the four telekhines I killed on our way in," Nico said with a nonchalant one-shouldered shrug, examining his nails. "I mean, if I'm that dumb then I'm probably too stupid to have noticed them lurking and killed them, right?"

Rachel rolled her eyes. "We stopped on the way in to kill four telekhines," she said to Annabeth and Percy. "Mr Modest over there went a whole five minutes without mentioning _that_."

"There are _more _of them?" Annabeth said exasperatedly, throwing her head back. "_Seriously_?"

Riptide ballooned in Percy's hand. "Where?" he said tersely.

Nico waved a hand. "They're dust," he said. "Literally. Hopefully it's good mulch for the plants because otherwise I think I killed your bushes."

The relief was palpable on Annabeth's face and she said down hard on the broken chair, putting her beer between her knees so she could massage her closed eyes.

Rachel's face contracted into a small frown. "Are you okay? Do you want us to leave?" she asked uncertainly. "I... we… We just thought that you guys could use some company after how much this evening has sucked."

"Leave? But… the pizza is coming?" Nico reminded her, bafflement encroaching onto his face when he was temporarily silenced by a pointed look from Rachel. "What?"

Rachel didn't answer. Instead, she crossed the sunroom to crouch in front of Annabeth, opening her bag as she did so. "Hey, Annabeth… talk to me here."

"I'm fine," Annabeth said, looking up at Rachel with bleary grey eyes and managing a small smile. "It's nothing. I'm fine. Today has just worn me out, you know? Worn me down, too."

Rachel grimaced sympathetically. "I get it," she said. "I'm sorry I didn't see it in time."

Annabeth waved a hand. "Not your fault," she said. "We should keep the cloaking spell more updated."

Rachel pulled a vase from her bag and presented it to Annabeth. "Absolutely," she said. "You don't want this broken, right? I've been testing my kiln and when I saw the vase I thought you could use this."

The vase was sea green and white, with owls flying around the rim and a seascape painted on the side.

Annabeth smiled. "It's beautiful. Thank you."

"I just hope you have a really uneven surface to put it down on," Nico said brightly, shrugging when Rachel turned to scowl at him. "What?" he asked. "Put it down. Show her."

Rachel gave Nico one more moment of scorching glare — which would have blistered the paint off a battleship in ordinary circumstances but she could practically see it running off him without effect like water off a duck's back, the bastard — before turning back to Annabeth.

"It's… a little wonky," she admitted. "Nico thinks it's funny, because he's a dick, but I'm still ironing out the kinks in this whole ceramics thing." She placed the vase down on the floor and immediately it rocked back towards her and she had to catch it. "But I bought putty rubber which you can stick under it," she added enthusiastically. "I use it as an eraser but if you just stick it under the bottom…" She broke a piece of eraser off and demonstrated; the vase stuck to the floor without falling over. "There!"

"Thank you," Annabeth said genuinely. "Thank you, Rachel. Seriously."

"Oh, and there was this crew of guys I worked with when I was restoring the artwork in this old church," Rachel said. "They were doing the stained glass at the same time I was working on the murals. They're coming in the morning to take a look at the windows, no questions asked."

Annabeth tried to speak a few times and couldn't, so instead she just hugged Rachel. "Percy, find a pen," she said when she broke the hug. "You'll need it to sign the divorce papers. I'm going to marry Rachel instead."

Percy cocked his head to one side, taking a contemplative swig of beer.

"Wow, okay, or I might just divorce you for apparently not caring that I'm thinking about divorcing you," Annabeth said pointedly arching an eyebrow at him.

"Hey, I'm just trying to figure out how I feel about this," Percy said. "I mean yeah, I'd be divorced but my ex-wife would be embroiled in a hot lesbian affair, which—"

He was forced to raise an arm to shield himself; Annabeth had thrown a cushion from beneath her and Rachel launched the remains of her putty.

"That was a compliment!" he protested as the cushion bounced off his arm. "I said it would be hot!"

The doorbell rang. "Pizza!" Nico said gleefully, jumping off the dining table. "Percy, you have cash, right?"

Percy rolled his eyes. "Seriously?" he asked, fishing his wallet out of his back pocket and winging it at Nico (sadly, Nico caught it with one hand before it could bean him on the head). "Your dad is the god of wealth. Why are you always broke?"

"Hey, talk to Hazel if you want that incarnation of him," Nico returned, turning and moving towards the front of the house. "With me you get what you get."

"We know," Annabeth, Rachel and Percy said at exactly the same time, breaking out into laughter as Nico's arm temporarily reappeared around the doorjamb to flip them all the bird.

"I'm gonna use the bathroom real quick before we eat," Rachel said, getting up off the floor and brushing dirt which had spewed from a fallen ficus from her knees. "Do you mind?"

"Knock yourself out," Annabeth said.

Percy moved towards Annabeth once Rachel had gone, dragging her up from the chair despite her reluctance to get up and into another hug. "Are you sure you're okay?" he asked.

Annabeth smiled, spotting Nico coming back into the dining room carrying pizza boxes with one hand and ramming a slice into his mouth with the other.

"Yeah," she said. "I will be."


	2. Alone Together

**The Boring Blurb**

**This fic, _After the Before_, is going to be a collection of oneshots which generally occur _after _serious events in demigod life because that's where most of my 'archive' seem to be set when I read it back. People focus on the main events in demigod life, the battles lost and won, friendships made and broken, news that breaks hearts and causes them to soar, but these oneshots will be just kind of what happens after all of that. After the cameras have stopped rolling, almost.  
**

**Some events will be focusing on what happens after 'real' (i.e. canonical) events while some (probably most) will be what goes on after events of my own choosing. Most are sad, because I have a penchant for angst (if you don't know that then, well, you'll soon find out).  
**

**The oneshots will not be related and they will not happen chronologically; nor will they necessarily happen in the same timeline. They will be self-contained — if I kill a character in one chapter and they turn up in the next, that's why.  
**

* * *

**We're choosing angst for the main theme of this evening. I realised I said I'd try to post happy things in between but, well, as a general rule I don't tend to make with the happy. Sorry about that.**

**This is something I wrote a while ago, and I really thought that I'd posted it, but I can't seem to find it online. If someone spots that I've accidentally ripped myself off by reposting this, please do let me know. This is a scene between Percy and Nico in the gap between _The Titan's Curse _and _The Battle of the Labyrinth, _i.e. after the death of Bianca and the mess Nico made of the dining pavillion's floor, and is designed in my head to bridge the gap between the two Nicos we see in these books.**

**I don't own PJO. Y'all should know that by now.  
**

**Marzipan.**

* * *

**Chapter Two: Alone Together  
**

**Characters:**

**Percy**

**Nico**

* * *

Percy was dreaming. Not a demigod, prophetic kind of dream for once but a regular one involving a dachshund and a house made of gingerbread. Strange combination? Definitely. Yet it was ranking amongst his better dreams given his history of dreams, especially with the dachshund, which were just plain hilarious to look at in his opinion.

Violent, bloody dreams; dreams of death, carnage and destruction; dreams of Titan Lords far away plotting to kill him and destroy Camp Half-Blood were all a world away from what he was dreaming about. And that was a _good_ thing. Lately, he'd been mostly drawing a blank when trying to come up with good things, so perhaps that was why it was so hard to climb back to consciousness when he felt something was wrong. He had just dreamed that a bee had flown out of the dachshund's mouth and stung him in the neck, but the pain was so real…

He came back to his senses slowly, clawing his way out of his dream back into reality to find something colder than ice pressed against his neck and a bead of blood trickling down his throat to pool in the dip between his collarbones. He could smell the metallic tang of the blood. Inhaling sharply, he instinctively tried to sit up, but it just pressed the biting cold of whatever weapon was holding him deeper into his flesh and swelled the rivulet of blood and he had to cautiously lower himself back down onto the bed.

"Luke," Percy said automatically, grimly, venom in his voice. He tilted his head back further into the pillow and trying to peer through the gloom at his captor. If he strained his eyes to the left, he could just about make out the face of his alarm clock on the nightstand, glowing 02:40.

"As if," was the reply, yielding no further information except that it wasn't Luke.

Percy was too floored by the notion that he had someone besides Luke who would creep into his bedroom at night and hold him at swordpoint in his life to work out who was actually speaking. _Another _mortal enemy? Seriously? This whole demigod life was bringing him far too many enemies. He was a nice enough guy, right? He tried hard not to piss anyone off (well, unless they had it coming), so what was with assassins lining up to take their shot at him?

He swallowed, the bob of his Adam's apple catching uncomfortably on the blade pressed just beneath it. He considered the voice more carefully. It was higher than Luke's, or indeed his: it was someone younger than either of them, but it was still definitely a guy's voice.

There was something else there, a thickness to it that Percy recognised from all those years of walking in on his mom crying. Sally had always tried to hide it from him by talking to him normally when that had happened, asking about school or whatever else she could think of, as if the puffy eyes and the tearstains weren't a total giveaway that she was upset. Now that Percy thought about it, the hurriedly-applied makeup on top of black eyes should have made him realise what was going on long before he had as well — how could he have believed that his mother was clumsy enough to walk into pretty much everything?

Percy was in the middle of plotting to reanimate Gabe just so he get ringside seat to a second petrification (twiddling his thumbs waiting for Medusa to make another appearance and then having to behead her again would be totally worth it) when suddenly it clicked. "Nico," he said evenly. It wasn't a question: why ask when he already knew the answer? "What's going on?"

Nico's sword wavered, shifting so that it was resting just beneath Percy's chin. Percy heard the other occupant of the room give a loud sniff before the weapon moved again as the younger demigod hardened his resolve.

"You killed my sister."

For a fleeting moment, Percy thought Nico had taken the sword and plunged it into his chest, or maybe his stomach, such were the piercing power of those four words, yet the blade was still at his throat. Nico could have punched him in the gut and it would have had less of an effect, would have hurt a damn sight less, too. It seemed like everything Nico had was in that tiny, compact sentence; he spoke from a raw wound deep inside him, one only the forced removal of a person you loved could gouge. His voice was shaking with the power of what he had said, the depths to which he truly felt and believed what he was saying.

He was holding Percy responsible for what had happened to Bianca.

"Nico—" Percy started, but was cut off by a choked sob from the younger demigod and the sword trembling so hard that Percy was convinced he was going to end up with his throat slit by a gash that looked like it had been drawn by an Etch A Sketch.

"No, no. _No_," Nico disallowed vehemently. "Don't try and talk your way out of this. You've already managed to convince everyone in your stupid Camp that it wasn't your fault, that you were the hero in all of this and that Bianca was just a sad little loss in a dumb great big war. I didn't ask to be part of this, Percy! _We_ didn't ask to be dragged out of Westover Hall and into this stupid stuff. If you'd just left us alone—"

"You'd be dead, Nico," Percy reminded him gently. "Or are you forgetting what we saved you from at that school? Dr. Thorn?" He was finding it a little easier to see the outline of Nico in the darkness of the bedroom, but Nico hadn't made it easy to be seen in the dark. He was dressed in black and his sword seemed to have the power to suck in light and spew out darkness. It was not celestial bronze, that was for sure. Percy had never seen anything like it.

"I might as well be dead," Nico spat angrily. "Bianca was everything I had and you let her die. What's left?"

Gods, what a question.

How was Percy meant to answer that one? It was so loaded it could go off at any second, only instead of something going bang Percy was probably going to end up with his throat cut. And what was more, it was so _true _for Nico. Percy had never been alone and he didn't know how he would have coped if he had been. It was a miracle Nico was still standing, in his opinion.

"Can I turn on the light?" Percy asked instead of answering, trying to fill the pregnant pause Nico's statement had left. His hand crept towards the lamp on his nightstand.

Nico was completely unable to think straight at the moment. Bianca's death was weighing too heavily on his mind and Percy was not entirely sure he wouldn't do something he would regret, something along the lines of separating Percy's body and head. Maybe putting a bit of light on the situation would remind Nico that there was a human being under his sword.

What had happened to Nico? Creeping into bedrooms and threatening to kill their occupants was so far from the vibe Percy had picked up from him when they had first met. Nico had seemed like a perfectly ordinary, if dorky, kid, safely playing the bratty kid brother role that suited him perfectly because Bianca had allowed him to get away with it for so long. She had humoured and indulged him as she had tried to raise him, in the way any older sibling must when they have to step up to the plate and become both Mom _and_ Dad when they are just kids themselves.

Irritating? Sure. Mad, bad and just plain dangerous? Not a chance. Percy was still having trouble believing that Nico was actually here, that it had come to this. Nico clearly blamed Percy for what had happened; perhaps between that and the grief… Nico just wasn't the kid Percy had met anymore.

It was Nico's turn to pause now, slightly thrown by Percy's request. "Uh, sure," he managed eventually.

Percy immediately flicked on the light; his fingers had already been on the switch. Light flooded the room and Percy had to blink hard against the glare until his eyes had adjusted.

Nico was standing next to the bed, looking like a completely different demigod than the one that had terrified himself by rending that massive chasm in the middle of the dining pavilion. He was a little taller, for one thing, and had got so skinny that Percy was surprised his mother hadn't honed in on an underfed child in the room next to her and fired up the stove.

His cheekbones stuck out and his cheeks were hollow, the skin stretched over them much paler and almost waxy. Deep, dark purple rings were smudged around his eyes, which were burning intensely in his skull, glaring Percy's horizontal form. Percy glanced at the sword Nico was holding. The blade was short, jet black and ugly; it was nothing like Riptide or any other blade he had seen. Yet the more he looked at it, the more he could appreciate the sheer amount of craftsmanship that had gone into forging it.

Despite the obvious differences, perhaps Nico's new sword _did _rival Riptide in appearance, and ugliness was just a shroud covering it because of the way Percy felt about it. There was a dull blue sheen playing over the metal and, call him crazy, but it felt like the edges of the blade, which vanished into a point too fine for the human eye to see, would be able to slice into the air itself. Just looking at it made him feel cold and sort of… _shivery _he noticed with a slight twinge of panic. Right at the point where the blade was drawing blood it was almost like something was escaping. What kind of weapon was it?

Percy's hand was still resting casually on the switch to his lamp. He started slowly, subtly shifting his hand across the surface of his nightstand where he had placed Riptide before he went to bed, just like he did every night. He used his fingers to filter through the accumulation of crap he had chucked there: the book he was meant to be reading for English, an odd sock, his notebook, an empty packet of M&Ms, four drachmas, two dollars and eighteen cents in change…

He wasn't going to stab Nico with it, but at least he'd have a chance of fighting him off. Percy didn't want to hurt Nico, nor did he want to cause any major property damage, which kind of ruled out tapping into the water running through the pipes in the walls. That only left beating Nico back and maybe disarming him in a fair swordfight, and for that he needed Riptide.

One problem: he couldn't find his sword.

Nico looked down sharply when Percy nearly knocked the stupid book off the nightstand as he desperately stepped up his search-by-feeling. "Looking for this?" Nico asked, drawing Riptide in pen-form from the pocket of the aviator jacket Percy had never seen before. It was way too big for him, drowning his frame, and made him look even younger than he already was. Nico may be eleven years old physically, and the jacket made him look even younger, but he was carrying a pain in his eyes that had aged him well beyond that.

Nico waggled the deadly ballpoint pen absently in front of Percy, doing that bend-the-pen trick Percy had spent half his time in class sitting at the back doing.

Percy glared at him, despite himself. It probably wasn't the best way to defuse the situation, but he hated seeing someone else touch his sword. "So, I'm unarmed. Kill me, if that's what you want," he said, deliberately holding eye contact with Nico. "Lying in my bed in my pajamas. Nice and heroic."

Nico hesitated, his throat working hard as he fought back another wave of emotions. His eyes softened briefly and his grip on his sword relaxed slightly, but then the veneer slid back up again. "Then I guess I'm not a hero," he said softly, shrugging with the shoulder that wasn't holding the sword. "But I'm fine with that. Like I said: I never wanted to be, anyway." His eyes still shimmered with tears despite the cold, hard tone in his voice.

Percy glanced down nervously at the sword again. So, turning the light on hadn't released the onslaught of emotions on Nico's part that he had been banking on to help save his life. So, Plan B. "What kind of sword is that?" Percy asked in an attempt to distract Nico. "I've never seen anything like it before."

"Stygian iron," Nico replied. "I've been to meet my father since we last spoke, Percy. He had this ready in his armoury."

So Nico had found out that he was a child of the Underworld, a son of the Big Three. That spelled bad news for him; Percy knew from experience that discovering who you were only made it easier for the monsters to find you. Self-awareness was a powerful beacon for them.

"Your dad made you a brand new sword?" Percy asked, trying not to let the twinge of jealousy he felt creep into his voice. Hey, he loved Riptide, and he could never feel at home with another weapon, as his fairly-disastrous first few days of weapons training at Camp had proved, but Riptide had a history; it wasn't his alone. It had been forged out of the love of Zoë Nightshade for another demigod hero long ago: before Percy, Riptide had been the ultimate weapon of Hercules. Percy would never choose another weapon as long as he lived, but the fact remained that it _was _at least second-hand, not a newly-forged gift from his father to welcome Percy into the world of demigods and Camp Half-Blood.

Nico's face clouded at Percy's assumption, however, and he flicked his eyes to the floor. "I never said it was ready for me," he said miserably.

"Bianca," Percy murmured understandingly, cursing himself. Hades had had the sword forged for Bianca because she was the oldest and had more chance of being the child the prophecy mentioned. Nico had only been given the blade by default and would probably have been passed over entirely by Hades if Bianca had survived. Percy could have kicked himself if sudden movements wouldn't have resulted in him getting his throat cut out.

"He believed in her," Nico said hollowly. "He thought she was going to be the champion the Underworld hadn't had for so long. Someone to put him back on the rest of the gods' radar."

"Hey, he's still got you," Percy reasoned. "He gave you her sword. And considering you got the jump on me, well, that's nothing to sniff at."

Nico laughed humourlessly. "Yeah. You tell that to him. All I get from him is how I'm not Bianca. I'm not learning and growing fast enough. It's like… he looks at me and I know that he's settled for second-best." His voice started to break again and he sniffed hard.

"Nico… do you want to put the sword down?" Percy tried tentatively as a shuddering sob wracked the younger demigod's body. "It's not exactly comfortable, you know?"

"Why should I?" Nico bit back suddenly, savagely, pressing the point even deeper into Percy's throat. As more blood welled from the wound, Percy felt himself get colder. "This is payback. For not protecting my sister. You promised."

"I couldn't have saved her, Nico," Percy reminded him desperately. "There was a prophecy that said that one out of our group was going to die. We all knew that and we went anyway. What happened to Bianca happened in seconds, before anyone could even react. It was… she did the bravest thing I think I've ever seen anyone do. She ran straight towards the danger and took it on all by herself so the rest of us could live. She was a hero, Nico."

Nico's face twisted into a mask of grief and anger. "Brave?" he hissed, barking out another laugh without any mirth. "A _hero_? I _told _you: neither of us wanted to be heroes. It's _stupid. _But I guess as long as she was _brave _then it's fine that I'm all by myself, isn't it? Bravery can't bring her back to me. Her being a hero doesn't change the fact that I have got _no one _left." He took a shuddering breath in and let it out slowly.

"What else can I give you?" Percy asked gently. "I can't bring her back, either, Nico. All I can do is honour her memory and tell you how much she loved you." The blood was starting to get sticky on his neck as some of it started to dry, and he was getting more and more alarmed at the feeling that something was escaping out of the wound the sword was making.

"She didn't love me enough to stay," Nico said sadly. "It's always been me and her, _always_. Then as soon as she gets a chance to ditch me she runs off with those stupid Hunters. Like she wasn't ever my sister…" It was that bond, knowing that all that had was each other, that had made them so close. It was that bond that was the reason Nico felt like he had been dealt a sucking chest wound at her death that he would never, _could _never, heal from.

"Are you mad at me for not being able to keep my promise or are you mad at her for leaving you?" Percy asked.

Nico growled angrily in the back of his throat and jabbed so hard with his sword Percy again started to think that decapitation was the only likely outcome. "Take that back. I am _not _mad at Bianca. She's my sister and I love her. Take it back!"

"You just said she ditched you," Percy reminded him. "Are you really not mad about that?"

Nico opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again, the corners of his mouth tugging down and tears spilling down his pale cheeks, leaving track marks in the light coating of grime he had accumulated on his face, no doubt from some Underworld cavern.

"I'm a pain in the ass. I'm not surprised she wanted to get rid of me," he said through his tears. "She had to put up with me for so long, but I never thought I wouldn't see her again, Percy. I never thought I'd be here without her. I would have been a better brother, you know? Just given her an easier time. And now, well, I'm not going to get that chance because she's not here and she's never not been here. I want her back so badly. I just want… I don't know what to do without her, and…" He couldn't finish his sentence for crying and turned on his heel, storming over to the window and staring out.

Percy quickly checked the nick on his throat with his fingers, wiped the blood on the t-shirt he was wearing, then swept the bedclothes off himself and swiftly got out of bed. It was chilly in the room, exposed to the September air, and he felt goosegumps race up his arms, puckering the flesh. He opened the drawer of his nightstand and pulled out something wrapped in tissue paper, then quietly went to stand next to Nico.

The younger demigod was crying silently, tears coursing down his face and dripping off his jaw and the end of his nose. His forehead was creased tightly and his eyes were screwed closed, but not enough to hold back the tears. His lower lip was wobbling. The light from the city beyond the window glimmered in the damp wake the tears had left on his face. Every now and then, Nico would swipe angrily at his face with his sleeve, smearing the dirt around.

"I really think you should take this," Percy said, unwrapping the Hades statuette that Nico had so violently rejected in the dining pavilion just a month ago. "It's yours. She wanted you to have it. She died the way she lived, Nico. Doing anything she could to make you happy. Not only was so, _so _brave, like seriously, but she loved you and she was always thinking about you, even after she became a Hunter. She tried so hard to give you everything she could and maybe… maybe she thought now things were getting explained to you, now that you both belonged somewhere, had someplace to go that you'd be safe, that you didn't need her as much anymore? That you could grow and become your own people and that's why she joined Artemis. Plus, Thalia and Annabeth both say that they can be pretty persuasive when they want to recruit someone."

Percy held the statue of Hades out to Nico and Nico opened his eyes to stare at it, more tears quivering at his lower eyelids before making their mad dash for freedom down his face.

"I did need her," Nico said, the words mangled by the hitching his throat. "I _did_."

Percy sighed. "I know, Nico. I guess she was just… I don't know. She was so relieved that you were going to be safe for once, maybe even happy after a while, that she thought leaving you for a little bit would help you both. You'd both be able to explore being apart, just for a little while. No one goes on these quests thinking they're about to die. Even if the Oracle says it's going to be someone, you never think it's going to be you, somehow. Bianca thought she was coming home to you. Everyone has something that keeps them going on quests, no matter how hard they get: I think this statue proves that for her, that something was you."

Nico gently took the figurine from Percy and held it in his hand, staring down at it. He squeezed it to his chest for a brief moment like it was a teddy, then placed it down on the windowsill facing out to the night. "You keep it," he said. "I'm not just some kid obsessed with Mythomagic anymore and I don't want to carry around something that Bianca got herself killed trying to get for me. What am I supposed to do with it? Especially because she could be alive today if it wasn't for me and my stupid collection and card game?" He had been trailing his sword absently across the carpet, but now he sheathed it. The tears appeared to have dried up now and he cuffed the last of them from his cheeks with his sleeve, then dabbed at his nose when he was done.

"I'll keep it safe," Percy said. "It's the last thing Bianca did for you before she died. You'll want it one day."

"Maybe," Nico said softly, staring down at it but clearly not actually really seeing it. He absently put the toggle of the hoodie he was wearing under his jacket in his mouth and chewed on the end of it. "I really don't know what to do without her, Percy." He looked up at Percy, the toggle falling from his mouth, and that much was clear. He looked lost, cast adrift in an endless ocean. "I know I keep saying it but it's true. I can't believe I wasn't there to help her. What kind of brother am I?"

"The kind of brother that gets chosen to wield her sword," Percy said, finding a fierce edge to his voice. "So you weren't there to help her when she died but now you're going to fight for what she stands for. What you stand for. You're going to be the kind of brother who is going to take up her legacy and her memory and fight for what she believed in. What everyone she stood for still believes in. You are going to do her proud. _That's_ what kind of brother you are. _That's_ what you're going to do without her. You can still do so much, even without her."

Nico looked up into Percy's face, almost as if Percy's tone had given him a virtual shake. "I'm not her, Percy. And I'm not you. I don't think I can do that. I just want a big sister again. I need her to nag me and mess around with me and to just… not be dead."

The haunted, aged look in Nico's eyes made is so difficult for Percy to remember that he was talking to someone who was only eleven years old and facing the rest of his life without any close family connections. Nico still had the mental limitations of a child when it came to what he thought it was possible to achieve. Percy wished Nico had been allowed to be a child for much longer than he had been. Then again, look at him. Look at Annabeth and Luke and Thalia. Demigods grew up fast in this world. It was all you could do to survive and it sucked but it had to be done.

"I think you can," Percy said. "I think you can do it for her. Come on, Nico — you're a demigod, a living son of Hades for the gods' sake. That itself is supposed to be impossible. You can do anything if you put your mind to it."

Nico paused, his eyes adopting a dreamy, far off expression and his jaw slackening slightly. "I can do anything?" he asked faintly, more to himself than Percy. A fire of determination was suddenly kindled behind his eyes and Percy fought the urge to back away. Nico instantly had the eyes of his father, the blazing look that was either genius or madman, and it was not bringing back fond memories. "I _can_ do anything, you're right. Thank you, Percy. I guess I should go…" He reached into his pocket and put Riptide down next to the Hades statuette on the windowsill. "I'm sorry for… you know. Waking you up. It looked like it was a good dream. There aren't many of those going around, huh?"

"Nico, wait," Percy said quickly, moving forwards towards Nico. "When I said _any_thing, I didn't literally mean—" But Nico had slipped into the shadows and vanished. Percy blinked at where his cousin had been standing not moments before and decided he had a really bad feeling about the path Nico had chosen to take, a path he had accidentally set him on.

Running a distracted hand through his hair Percy stuck his thumbnail in his mouth and chewed, still staring at the spot Nico had been. What had he done? He passed a hand over his eyes, then turned away from the window, scooping up the figure of Hades as he did so. He gave it a critical look for a second before rewrapping it and placing it back in the drawer. Then he turned to fetch Riptide from the windowsill but the view of the city snagged him and he had to pause, struck suddenly by how small he was compared to this tiny island, let alone the freaking _world _and all of human history.

He was just one guy; a demigod, sure, but basically just a guy, and he was trying his hardest to save everything beyond his window. What part was Nico going to end up playing in all of that? Had he screwed that up just now? And how badly?

Not every demigod had the same destiny, the same deeds to perform. Look at all of the demigods currently working for Kronos and Luke in their attempt to overthrow Olympus. Each of them, like he did, had their own path to take. He supposed that even if Nico was currently making his first steps on a particularly dark, winding path, then all he could do was have faith that Nico would end up in the right place and on the right side when he came to the end of his journey, when it was time to make the big decision.

That's what it all came down to, after all. Decisions you made as a person here and there could and did change your life, and the lives of others, forever. That was especially true when you were a demigod.

Percy had so many friends in the demigod world that he would die for over and over again if he had to. He would stand on the borders of Camp and defend it to his death if that's what it came down to. But despite that, despite all of the people that had been by his side this entire time, and would be by his side as the demigod world went to war, there were decisions that he, and Nico, and all the demigods he knew had to make all by themselves.

They had to decide who they were. What they believed in. Which side they were on.

It sucked for someone like him, who was all about his friends over everything else, but there were some decisions that couldn't be made as a group, or for other people. They had to be made on a deeply personal level.

War was coming and although demigods on both sides would fight with and for each other, ultimately the big decisions were made individually. In that sense, a true hero travelled alone on their journey through life, forging their own way. Even though they could spend life surrounded by other people, dealing with the successes and failures those individual choices brought was something that would likely either make or break them by the time they reached the journey's end.


	3. When Spring Comes

**The Boring Blurb**

**This fic, _After the Before_, is going to be a collection of oneshots which generally occur _after _serious events in demigod life because that's where most of my 'archive' seem to be set when I read it back. People focus on the main events in demigod life, the battles lost and won, friendships made and broken, news that breaks hearts and causes them to soar, but these oneshots will be just kind of what happens after all of that. After the cameras have stopped rolling, almost.  
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**Some events will be focusing on what happens after 'real' (i.e. canonical) events while some (probably most) will be what goes on after events of my own choosing. Most are sad, because I have a penchant for angst (if you don't know that then, well, you'll soon find out).  
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**The oneshots will not be related and they will not happen chronologically; nor will they necessarily happen in the same timeline. They will be self-contained — if I kill a character in one chapter and they turn up in the next, that's why.  
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**I don't own PJO. Y'all should know that by now.  
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**Marzipan.**

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**Chapter Three: When Spring Comes  
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**This chapter deals perhaps the most strongly with the real-life consequences of being a demigod, when they grow up, when they stop being heroes, when they just have to be human beings.**

**Characters:**

**Annabeth**

**Percy**

**Rachel**

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_January_

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Annabeth had never been one for introspection, not really.

For her, the real mysteries that needed to be solved — not to mention all manner of other interests — were out in the real world and not buried deeply in her psyche, so why would she ever spend time examining each little twinge of a feeling inside her?

She was smart enough to know that it was unlikely to lead to a happy place and so she just wasn't into it, that whole dark, brooding, emo thing (although she knew a certain son of Hades that still could be in certain circumstances). The reality was, though, that she had simply never understood where it would get her.

Well, until now, she guessed. It had ended in her sitting on a park bench wrapped up (ineffectually) in about a hundred layers against January and all of its bastardry. Otherwise known as precisely nowhere.

And yet she couldn't stop. The whole situation was going round and round in her head like a nightmarish carousel and, to clash metaphors spectacularly (metaphor cage-fighting, even), it was eating her up inside to boot.

Her breath was smoking in front of her as she looked down at her gloved hands. They were clasped in her lap just to quell the sudden need she felt to wring them, because she was not going to allow herself to stoop to useless handwringing despite how dire the situation was.

Her nose was so cold that it hurt. It had started to, incredibly attractively, run with the cold. Equally as attractively, she had taken to occasionally cuffing it with the shoulder of her coat, because you only ever had tissues with you when you didn't need them. There was absolutely no feeling left in her feet; the pain she had initially felt in her toes had lessened gradually, although probably only because she was losing them to frostbite.

Gods, how long had she been sitting here?

She looked up from her hands around Central Park, which was covered in slushy, gross snow, smeared grey with New York City grime and orange with the rock salt thrown onto the paths. Oil of some kind or another swirled lazily in puddles left by ice melted with the grit and salt. It was hardly the picture postcard, the chocolate box scene that the city seemed to promise all of its tourists. A winter carriage ride around Central Park wasn't all it was cracked up to be in the brochures.

Barren trees had mini icicles dangling off the edges of overladen branches. No one else, it seemed, had braved the weather, braved the fact that the snow had compacted and then melted and refrozen so many times that she wondered why the hell people went to the Rockefeller Center to skate around and break their wrists when they had the opportunity to do it right here for free on the path next to the Meer?

She stamped her boot-clad feet and lurched upwards from the bench and started walking, no destination in mind, only the desire to get warm.

When she shoved her hands in her pocket, her left hand closed automatically around her BlackBerry. It had been buzzing and trilling and beeping the entire time she had been sitting here — the office, no doubt, wondering why their star project manager (and the youngest ever at just thirty) had gone out for lunch early and not come back — and she'd been ignoring it. Now, though, she pulled it out and clumsily swiped her gloved thumb across the track pad.

Emails. Text messages. Voicemails. Stuff she didn't want to deal with right now.

And yet she caved alarmingly quickly and checked anyway, because technology was nothing but a cruel master and that little red blipping LED on the top right was really starting to grate on her last nerve as it demanded her attention.

The first text message was from Percy, asking her when she'd be home.

Her heart plummeted towards somewhere near her frozen feet and she shoved the phone back in her pocket, wishing she could pitch it into the Meer, but the surface was frozen so solid that it would just sit there, LED winking gloatingly at her.

She wasn't mad with Percy, not at all, not by any means. If anything, she was seething at herself. It was just that texts from Percy were something on quite a long list of things that she just couldn't deal with right now. The news she had heard today was going to be impossible to tell him. She had no idea how to break it to him and the thought of it was just about killing her.

Annabeth knew Percy so well, knew every square millimetre of his face, and she could already see the expression he would pull when she told him. He wouldn't pull it consciously, of course. It would just be one of the million subtle facial expressions that every person had, it was just that she knew Percy's so well, just like he knew hers — you didn't fight for your lives together without learning to read each other. She could just see the instant sag of disappointment and concern that would probably be there and it would no doubt haunt her for some time.

Annabeth Chase had never failed at anything, not once in her life. It wasn't in her nature. And now… now there was this one massive thing that felt like it was compensating for the fact that she'd never failed at anything before now. Failure had had to catch up with her eventually, she guessed, but this was huge and it felt like it was tugging away at her insides.

Her feet crunched on the salt and frozen snow as she walked. She was nearly shoved off the path when an insane jogger — wearing shorts, no less, and sporting a pair of blue knees — came flying at her in the opposite direction. It was insanity being out running in these temperatures. Couldn't he just let the layer of insulating winter blubber build up like everyone else did? She paused to dwell on the irony of the fitness fanatic probably getting fatal hypothermia before starting walking again.

The news had hit her hard, harder than she thought it had ever would. Harder than she thought it ever _could_. She had had her suspicions, of course, that something was wrong. Yet even that hadn't prepared her for the reality, for the real, concreteness of a doctor on the other end of the phone giving her the test results.

Right now, her life with Percy was so damn complete; she had everything she had ever wanted, he had everything he ever wanted, they both lived on this insanely happy cloud where everything was so damn perfect and, according to Nico, so saccharine it made him puke.

They had been married for five years in May and as far as she was concerned the honeymoon period had never ended. The Plan (capital P, always capital P) for their lives together was meant to be progressing by now but suddenly there was a brick wall in the road.

It felt like she'd hit it at supersonic speeds.

Something brushed her eyelashes and she blinked — whatever it was lodged there obscuring her vision. She reached up to brush it off and pressed something cold into her eye. Looking up, she realised that it had started to snow again — if she'd been paying more attention, she'd have noticed that the sky had turned that threatening shade of pearl grey, looming overhead and ready to dump what would probably be another six inches on the city overnight.

With a sigh she pulled her hood up and hunched her shoulders; she had barely walked ten paces before the world in front of her started to swirl white as the snow began to fold itself over the Park.

It was so _cold_; it had gone to the very core of her body, down to her bones, and she knew it would take hours to be able to feel properly warm again. San Francisco may be misty, but at least she didn't have to contend with four thousand feet of snow every winter. Although, despite the more temperate climate, not once had she ever been tempted to return to California; she had barely thought about it since Percy slipped the engagement ring on her finger, since she'd said an emphatic _yes_.

It was as if the brief, snatched memories of her childhood in San Francisco that she had managed to glean before running away was a completely different life or, rather, someone _else's _life. The life of a person much, much less fortunate than her. It was thousands of miles literally but billions of miles figuratively from the life she had now.

The world in front of her was white. An icy wind blew, finding out every single chink in her heavy, wool-based armour and making her shiver. On her hood, snow dislodged from the trees above her plopped down heavily.

Still she kept walking, being ambulatory apparently better for her brain than sitting morosely on a bench and indulging in a little bit of wallowing in the self-pity mud pool. Plus, you know. Hypothermia and all. Even though the snow was blinding her, it felt like she had a purpose this time, somewhere to go, even if she didn't know where that was.

She took out her phone again, shielding it from the driving snow with one hand and checking through the recent calls with the other. Work had phoned three times on various different numbers and then, right underneath that, was the phone call she had received from the doctor's office just before lunchtime that had sent her into this tailspin.

Her thumb hovered above the green call button (as if, somehow, she could just call them back and tell them that no, they were wrong and she didn't accept their news and therefore it wasn't real or happening to her) but then she shoved the phone back into her pocket. What good would that do? What would ramming her two cents home to the doctor actually do to change anything, except perhaps make her feel one hell of a lot better?

It wasn't the fault of the doctors she'd been to see. She couldn't blame them or get angry with them, no matter how easy it would be, because the only person to really be mad at here was herself.

Gods she was feeling so low right now. She was struggling with it; it wasn't a feeling she was accustomed to because it wasn't in her nature. Annabeth ploughed through any issues that might arise that had the potential to make her feel blue and that was that. You didn't have time for them, just like she hadn't had time to miss her dad for a long time because she was trying not to get killed.

Then, even though she had been safe, she had tried not to miss him by telling herself that he was better off without her, that he had her stepmother and stepsiblings now. That was her way with dealing with that.

But this… How did you burst through this and come out of the other side?

There was no answer right there on the tip of her tongue, but suddenly she made up her mind to put one there, by force if she had to. Sure, she didn't know _yet_ but she'd figure it out, she decided. Or, even better, _they'd_ figure it out, her and Percy, as a couple, because that's what they did.

Setting her jaw in steely determination (which, unbeknownst to her but totally obvious to anyone who had ever seen her in this mood, was accompanied by a similar shift in her eyes), she made for the edge of the Park and the city beyond.

She didn't know how she was going to break it to Percy yet but she'd find a way to do it because he deserved to know at the end of the day. It was his right as much as it was hers to know what was going on.

The snow didn't slow on the way back to their apartment. The sidewalks were total death traps and she could barely see in front of her. Every time a bus or big truck fought past on the road beside her she flattened herself against the nearest building to avoid being sprayed by the slush and grossness that was building up near the kerbs.

When she finally got to her building, she took the stairs. Screw the elevator, she thought, as she burst into the service stairwell and clomped up the first flight. She needed to get warm and quickly — she had been shivering all of the way home — and there was no quicker way (or, perhaps, a better distraction) than hauling her ass up and up and up and up the seemingly endless flights of stairs to their apartment.

She was breathing hard when she finally arrived at their door, which worked quite well because she needed so many of those exhalations on her hands to get them working again so that they could manage the key and let her in.

The door squeaked — still, after all this time — as she opened it and she slipped through, her ears trained on the apartment beyond. There was no indication from Percy's text whether he was at home or not when he had sent it and she wondered if he was actually home. It would be just her luck if he wasn't, especially after she had just resolved to be totally, bluntly straight with him.

He was home, however, and came peeking his head around the bedroom doorjamb when she closed the front door. He smiled at her and crossed the apartment quickly, giving her a quick hello peck on the lips.

However, he quickly recoiled in horror. "You feel like _ice_," he said. "What have you been doing, playing abominable snowman?"

"Snow_woman_," Annabeth corrected automatically as she lowered her hood and yanked off her hat, sending her hair into peaks of static frizz. "And I resent the abominable. I've been for a walk."

Percy quirked an eyebrow at her. "In the snow. In January. In New York."

Annabeth sighed, nodding wearily, conceding now, as she slowly began to thaw in the warmth of the apartment, that perhaps her choice of locations to brood earlier had not been the best one given the temperature.

Instead of saying anything, she clamped her teeth onto the middle finger of first one glove and then the other, ripping them off and balling them with her hat and shoving them into one of her deeper coat pockets so they wouldn't have disappeared by the time she had to go out again.

Things had a habit of disappearing in their apartment. Percy and Annabeth blamed each other, heatedly at times.

Percy grabbed her newly-naked hands and almost winced. "You feel like you've got hypothermia," he said, clasping her hands between his.

"Yes, because touch is the proper way to diagnose hypothermia," Annabeth muttered sarcastically, rolling her eyes.

Percy obstinately pretended not to hear. "How long have you been out there?"

"Too long," Annabeth acknowledged grudgingly. "I was thinking about stuff. Percy… there's something I have to tell you," she said, opting for the direct approach. No pussyfooting around would do.

"Not before hot chocolate," Percy said a little fiercely. He led her to the kitchen by her hands, which were still clasped in his, despite Annabeth's attempts to protest.

"Yes, _before_ hot chocolate," Annabeth said, trying to pull her hands from his. He wouldn't let her; instead he just kept dragging her forwards and eventually steered her into a chair at the table in the kitchen. She huffed as she sat down against her will while he opened the fridge and pulled out milk.

"Seriously, Annabeth, Khione is warmer than you are right now and she's one frigid bitch. In more ways than one. You are gonna drink this and you're going to like it."

Percy was already busy making hot chocolate and she bit her lip, watching him as he worked. As she contemplated shattering that happy little bubble he was bobbing around in right now, her heart sank all over again and she felt her nerve quavering.

Instead of saying anything, she unbuttoned the toggles on her coat and then drew down the zip, shrugging out of it and throwing it over the back of her chair.

"Percy, sit down," she said in the end, her resolve once again taking over. She couldn't put this off indefinitely.

"Not before hot chocolate," he repeated, his tone almost singsong. "There is nothing what can't wait until after hot chocolate."

"This can't."

"Yes it can," Percy said with easy confidence. "Seriously, you can't say anything if you turn into an ice cube on me. Or an ice statue. And I have nowhere to keep you if you become an ice statue. Come spring you'd be all drippy and by summer you'd be a puddle."

Annabeth bit her tongue and stayed quiet until Percy deposited two blue mugs filled with hot chocolate down in front of her. There were blue marshmallows floating on top. Improbably, Percy was fantastic at making hot chocolate. She had never, ever had better hot chocolate than Percy's, not even one she'd paid about five bucks for in Starbucks, even though she was married to a demigod who had thought that you actually toasted French toast.

Hello shopping for a brand new toaster…

Annabeth looked down into her mug and sighed to herself, wrapping her hands around it despite the painful prickles it gave her as her fingers reluctantly came back to life.

"I told you it could wait until after hot chocolate," Percy said a little smugly. Despite the scalding temperature of her mug, Percy's was already half gone and he had a chocolate moustache and was dabbing whipped cream from his nose with his sleeve. Table manners, after all, were part of the curriculum at a finishing school, not Camp Half-Blood.

"There wasn't much of a choice in the matter, was there?" Annabeth said dryly, not looking at him as she abandoned her hold on the hot chocolate. Her eyes roved over the tablecloth, the faint splotch of coffee she hadn't been able to get out, the hole where she'd proudly accomplished a small piece of sewing and found out that she'd stitched it to the tablecloth.

It seemed that everything in this apartment told the story of the life that she and Percy had spent together, even the tiniest of things like the tablecloth, haunted by memories of cups of coffee past, all the way up to the frames with photographs and smiles and happy faces bursting out of them. Each one radiated happiness out at them from moments and adventures long over, like a time machine but not quite as good.

Perfect. It came back to her again. Her life right now was perfect; like a pair of magpies, Percy and she had lined their nest with all of the things that mattered in their life, material and otherwise, and so far it had all been so fantastic.

She couldn't help but feel that she was about to tear apart everything that that had built.

"The doctor called today," she said at last, sneaking a peek up at him through her eyelashes.

"Okay," he said evenly, setting his mug down now too and looking at her with a blank face, waiting for her to elaborate

"Not just the doctor," she elaborated with slight difficultly now she actually had to face him and say it out loud. It was fine to resolve to do something but to actually have to do it… "The… the OB/GYN."

She saw the smile sink slightly off Percy's face; his hands twitched like he was going to reach out for hers but had then thought better of it. His second thoughts on offering her human contact stung. Did he already understand what was going through her head right now and feel disappointed in some way?

"You're okay, though. Right?" he asked, his forehead creasing into a frown.

Annabeth could barely give him an answer. "I'm okay, yeah."

Percy relaxed; she could see now that the twitch of his hands had not been an aborted attempt to give her comfort but an actual flinch at the thought that there might be something wrong with her. "Good," he said quietly, the smile returning to his eyes. "Then why the drama? The coming home as an icicle? If you're okay then that's all that matters."

Annabeth sighed heavily, massaging her eyes. Her fingers were artificially warm from the mug but her eyelids were still freezing; it was a weird sensation. "I am okay. It's just… he said… he said that there might be a few, uh, _complications_," she said, each word feeling like it was taking her an entire year to say. "In fact, it's not good news. At all."

Percy did grab her hands this time and she was grateful, she squeezed back as her throat bobbed at the tears trying to work their way past where her tonsils should have been had she not had them out when she was six.

"You can tell me," Percy said, looking straight into her eyes. "There is nothing you can't tell me. Nothing. I love you. Now, what did he say?"

"Oh gods," Annabeth moaned, suddenly wishing that Percy wasn't squeezing her hands encouragingly because she would quite like to cover her face and play the ultimate game of peek-a-boo, the one where she hit behind her hands and basked in the comforting glow of denial because her problems were all blotted from view. "I know how much you want kids," she continued. "And I realised that actually yeah, I do too. So _much_."

Percy thought he saw where this was going and was unconsciously holding his breath, waiting for Annabeth to come out with something that was clearly too difficult for her to just say outright.

"He said there was scarring," she eventually managed, clearer and steadier than she had sounded before. "Lots of scar tissue, in fact. In my womb. I think he called them uterine adhesions."

Using the medical term made it all seem a little bit better — for a brief moment, she could pretend that this cold, medical jargon wasn't about her and her body and her _life. _

Annabeth bit her lip to trap in what would have been a very choked sob. She felt selfish, evil, for sitting here and quietly and systematically dismantling everything that Percy wanted out of life.

"He asked me if I'd ever had any blows to the abdomen," she continued. "He said that, if it weren't for the fact that he'd read my notes, he would have said that I'd been rushed to the ER after a car wreck or something."

She laughed humourlessly, bitterly. Being a demigod, taking blows to every part of your body, including the abdomen, was pretty much par for the course, especially when you lived with a child of the Big Three and got your ass catapulted through drywall while your husband was hanging from one hand from the fire escape. She looked at the wall she had plunged through, at the slightly mismatched paint on the repair job, and remembered it all so vividly. The cloud of plaster dust, the noise of popping and crunching that she had been unable to determine whether it was her or the wall.

Whether it had been that incident which had done it or a combination of past incidents, she had often wondered how far the prayers to Apollo, the nectar and the ambrosia, had actually gone towards fixing the wounds that they'd all sustained over the years. Now, apparently, she had found out and was paying a huge price.

"So what does that mean?" Percy asked, pretty sure he knew already but asking anyway, just in case he was getting the wrong end of the stick. He didn't want to make her say it, not if she didn't want to, but he had to make sure he knew what she meant so he could help her deal.

Annabeth let out a shaky breath. "It means… it means that it will be very, _very_ unlikely for me to conceive naturally," she said. "And even then, if I do, it would probably be hard for me to carry it to term. That's why we haven't had any luck even though we've been trying… I'm so sorry Percy. I wish there was something I could do to make this better."

Percy shook his head vigorously. "You don't need to," he said, his eyes glinting fiercely. "'Very, very unlikely' is not impossible, okay? There's still a chance."

"Not impossible, no," Annabeth admitted, albeit reluctantly. "But improbable and implausible."

"Hey, don't be confusing me with your fancy words, Wise Girl," Percy said, a grin returning to his face, even if it was a shadow of its usual self. "All I need to know is that it _could _happen, okay? That's good enough for me."

"It's _not _though, is it?" Annabeth said crossly, annoyed that, for some strange reason, Percy wasn't blaming her as much as she was blaming herself. His unbridled optimism in the face of incontrovertible medical science didn't mesh with the way she was taking the news. "You want kids, Percy. _I_ want kids. What if we can't do that?"

"Do you want me to tell you some other things that were supposed to be impossible?" Percy said. "How about me kicking Hyperion's ass? Us kicking Kronos' ass? Or how about the fact that the Greek gods exist and are moored above the freaking Empire State Building in a citadel designed by _you_? We can get through this. We can keep trying until it happens."

"It might not though," Annabeth continued doggedly, not willing to let Percy pin his hopes on some tiny, remote chance. "In fact, it probably won't."

"Not interested," Percy said with a shrug. "Not interested in probablys or maybes or anything else. A slim chance is still a chance."

"You're not listening. What if we _can't_?" Annabeth persisted, frustratedly, because she had to know the answer to this; she had to know the answer that had kept him from doing that thing where his face fell when he heard bad news. Why was he so okay with this? What wasn't she seeing?

Percy shrugged. "We cross that bridge when we come to it. Anyway, Piper used to do a whole load of babysitting for the Jolie-Pitt kids. Something tells me their mom might have the number for a decent adoption agency." His eyes twinkled as he said it.

Annabeth gave a loud snort of laughter; she began to smile, which initially felt like there were ten pound weights dragging her entire face downwards until her muscles loosened up.

"Idiot," she said, shaking her head. "Thanks. I needed that."

"By 'that' I'm gonna assume you meant me. You've got me no matter what. I'm here for better for worse for blah blah blah you may kiss the bride, remember?"

Annabeth smiled, mostly because her mind had wandered as well during their wedding ceremony. Both of them had barely managed to stay lucid enough to do the repetition thing thanks to the fact that they were floating on love and their ADHD brains were elsewhere.

"So we're okay?" Annabeth asked.

"Duh," Percy said. "We're better than okay: we're awesome."

"I love you," she said, leaning across the table and kissing him square on the lips.

He kissed her back for a few seconds before pulling away. "I love you too," he said with a grin. "No matter what. We are going to get through this, Annabeth." He paused. "In fact, I love you more than you love me."

Annabeth smiled but kept silent, chewing on the inside of her cheek. This was a favourite game that Percy played to wind her up; if she disagreed and said that no, actually she loved him more than he loved her then it was all out war until the other conceded. As much as she _did _love him, of course, her brain was in a sort of fragile state right now and she didn't think she could handle coming up with the verbal ammo.

So she had told him and the world hadn't fallen apart. They were still standing and she hadn't destroyed anything. Apparently, it hadn't been the bomb she had thought it would be and that, she realised, was why her and Percy worked so damn well as a couple. There was nothing they couldn't do together, nothing that they didn't want to deal with together.

No matter what happened, they would be rock solid.

* * *

_May_

* * *

Annabeth still got a kick out of hitting Madison Avenue with Rachel. Granted, most of that kick was probably the buzz she got from the champagne that materialised on a tray at Rachel's elbow whenever she got her AmEx out, a tray which was followed shortly by a personal shopper, but still.

Annabeth would do just fine without the personal shopper, thank you very much, but the free champagne was just to die for.

"So what's Percy going to get you for your anniversary?" Rachel asked as they walked, arm-in-arm, towards the aforementioned Mecca for shopping socialites.

"I don't know," Annabeth said with a shrug. "He's always really secretive about it."

Rachel frowned. "Well, what's the traditional fifth anniversary gift?" she asked.

"How do you mean?" Annabeth asked, wondering idly if all of the people shopping here knew that she didn't belong.

"You know, like paper is one year and silver is twenty-five years and gold is fifty years," Rachel explained brusquely, in the way that Annabeth was totally used to now.

"No idea," Annabeth said simply in return.

Rachel huffed a sigh at Annabeth's unhelpfulness. "Fine. Let me think… Well, for my parents' fifth anniversary, my father bought my mother our ski lodge in Geneva… so… oh! Wood. It must be wood."

Annabeth cocked an eyebrow at Rachel. "I don't think it's a ski lodge," she said dryly. "And Percy hasn't stuck to those rules so far."

"Yeah, he's not much of a traditionalist," Rachel mused. "Well, he's nailed it for three years out of four so far. I don't know what he was thinking that year he bought you a universal remote, but still, three years out of four is pretty good for a guy. So okay, what are you getting him?"

"I haven't thought about it yet," Annabeth said, totally honestly. "Normally, it just comes to me."

"So… maybe you're going to give him a _big surprise_?" Rachel asked knowingly.

Annabeth wrinkled her nose. "What are you talking about, Dare?"

"Oh, nothing," Rachel said, her face the picture of innocence although there was a slightly cross edge to her voice that Annabeth didn't understand; nor did she get why Rachel slipped her arm out of Annabeth's slightly huffily.

Rachel had broken away from her to press her face against a shop window where tiny designer baby clothes were modelled by crawling mannequins.

"So cute!" Rachel said, looking sideways at Annabeth as the blonde casually made it over, hands in the pockets of her jacket. "Don't you think they're cute?"

"I think dry clean only baby clothes are a little impractical," Annabeth said noncommittally, wondering why Rachel had dragged her all the way over here to look at baby clothes. Perhaps all of the prophecies had finally sent her over the edge.

"Well, of course," Rachel said. "But I mean, baby clothes! Babies! Cute! No?"

Given how much Annabeth wanted a baby to put in those baby clothes, she couldn't agree. Instead, her stomach clenched miserably as she looked at the mannequins and imagined a baby of her own making its way on its hands and knees across the living room carpet dressed in little clothes just like that. She just about managed to give a weak shrug at Rachel's questions, who seemed to have taken offence for some reason. Annabeth blinked as Rachel turned her back on the window quickly, stomping off slightly in front of Annabeth.

"Hey, Dare! Slow down, will you?" Annabeth said as she surged forward to catch up with the redhead. What was wrong with her today? What was up with these mood swings?

Rachel reluctantly came to a stop and let Annabeth catch up, although she wouldn't speak for a time. She seemed to be part annoyed and part deep in thought.

"So what about those _storks_, huh?" Rachel asked suddenly, focussing her gaze intensely on Annabeth.

"What?" Annabeth asked. "Rachel, there are no storks. This is New York. Are you sure you're feeling okay?"

_Are you sure you're not having some weird, Oracle-induced seizure? _is what she actually wanted to ask but she didn't think Rachel would appreciate it with the mood that she was in.

"There might be storks," Rachel said haughtily. "They're migratory after all. And, sometimes, they deliver… _things._"

Annabeth was becoming more and more convinced that she needed to take Rachel to see Chiron. Perhaps she'd spent too long with the Oracle in her. How long was one person supposed to live with that anyway?

"Have you been at your mom's painkillers again?" Annabeth asked. "Seriously, Rachel, you're freaking me out a little."

"First of all, that was only because I had cramps and second of all, well, that's nice, isn't it?" Rachel snapped, flouncing away from Annabeth yet again. "I thought I was supposed to be your friend." She strode towards a shop and disappeared inside. "By the way, we're going in here," she yelled at Annabeth over her shoulder before repeating her earlier vanishing trick.

Knowing that Rachel could be quite the prima donna at times, despite the fact that she would deny it to the death, Annabeth rolled her eyes and followed slowly, her hands still in her pockets. Rachel could be very high-strung at times as well; Annabeth decided to see if she could wait until Rachel calmed down before deciding whether or not they needed to take her back to Camp.

As usual, as soon as Rachel appeared in the shop, up popped a woman with a tray with two flutes on it. Except, this time, instead of champagne they contained—

"Orange juice?" Annabeth asked incredulously, taking hers and holding it up to the light. There was no fizz at all, which meant that it wasn't even a mimosa. Half the reason she went shopping with Rachel was for the champagne and now she had to put up with plain old OJ instead?

"Yes, OJ," Rachel said angrily, her nostrils flaring. "I texted ahead. I thought I'd save you the trouble of having to lie about why you don't want champagne."

"Believe me, I want champagne," Annabeth said quickly. "I was good with champagne. I'm not a fan of shopping with you sober."

Somehow, a pair of shoes had been brought out to Rachel without her even asking to see them. Rachel set her orange juice down on the floor and kicked off her own ratty Converse and slid her foot into the new pair of shoes. They were even the right size. Did the rich and their personal shoppers share the gift of telepathy or something?

Rachel cocked her head at Annabeth and narrowed her eyes. "You'd… you'd rather have champagne?" she asked uncertainly as she rose, immediately wobbling dangerously on her heels and having to sit back down again. "Too high," she told the shopper, and the offending shoes were whisked out of sight.

"Than OJ? Is that a trick question?"

Rachel frowned, padding over to Annabeth in her bare feet and touching her arm, looking deeply at her face. "Oh, gods. Gods. Annabeth, you… you really don't know, do you?"

"Know _what_?" Annabeth demanded. "Rachel, you're being really weird. Even for you."

"Oh my gods," Rachel breathed, stepping back and putting her hand to her mouth. "I didn't think... I didn't think I'd tell you. I thought that you'd tell me. I've been waiting for you to tell me all day. I thought you'd have peed on the thing by now and—"

"_Excuse me?!" _Annabeth choked out, her eyes darting wildly around the shop. She stepped closer to Rachel and hissed, "Peed on _what _thing?"

"The pregnancy test," Rachel said. "I thought you'd have taken one by now."

Annabeth closed her eyes, the memory of the doctor's office five months ago coming flooding back to her. Since then, she'd tried not to think about the whole situation. Even though logically she knew that she should be taking practical steps such as looking up adoption agencies, she was still very much feeling like she in limbo with the whole thing. It was still too fresh a pain to try and conquet; it was easier to ignore it than have to actually try and deal.

"I'm really not pregnant," she said hollowly. "Woman with a scarred uterus over here, remember?"

"Uh, woman possessed by the Oracle over here, _remember_?" Rachel returned. "And yeah, Annabeth, you really kind of are."

The explosion of feelings this set off in Annabeth's chest meant that she didn't even hear the glass of orange juice she was holding shatter on the floor.


	4. Lather, Rinse, Repeat

**The Boring Blurb**

**This fic, **_**After the Before**_**, is going to be a collection of oneshots which generally occur **_**after **_**serious events in demigod life because that's where most of my 'archive' seem to be set when I read it back. People focus on the main events in demigod life, the battles lost and won, friendships made and broken, news that breaks hearts and causes them to soar, but these oneshots will be just kind of what happens after all of that. After the cameras have stopped rolling, almost.**

**Some events will be focusing on what happens after 'real' (i.e. canonical) events while some (probably most) will be what goes on after events of my own choosing. Most are sad, because I have a penchant for angst (if you don't know that then, well, you'll soon find out).**

**The oneshots will not be related and they will not happen chronologically; nor will they necessarily happen in the same timeline. They will be self-contained — if I kill a character in one chapter and they turn up in the next, that's why.**

**I don't own PJO. Y'all should know that by now.**

**Marzipan.**

* * *

**Chapter Four: Lather, Rinse, Repeat**

**Really, the happy stuff I promised? Not so much. I can't say I'm very good at that. I can't say I'm even very good at anything, but I hope I get points for trying. Another sad story.**

**Characters:**

**Jason**

**Piper**

* * *

Piper had definitely not given enough consideration to cutting bangs into her hair.

They were tickling her forehead as she scrubbed and driving her insane. For the umpteenth time so far she used her forearm to shove them off her head. Her forehead was slightly slick with sweat; the harder she wiped, the more effort she put in, the easier everything became and the further the dark thoughts retreated. She was losing herself in a repetitive cycle of scrub, rinse, dry — anything to blunt the teeth of the bear trap ensnaring her heart.

Overly dramatic? Perhaps. Perhaps she was falling prey to the lingo of the Aphrodite Cabin after all this time, but this wasn't just heartache after some rebuffed puppy love. In fact, it wasn't even about romantic love at all, just the platonic love of friendship and the pain that came with the knowledge that she would never get to feel it again. It felt like she had swallowed a lead ball and it was stuck in her chest, making every breath an effort, each movement a struggle.

It hurt so much and yet her eyes remained stubbornly dry. It was weird. Something had been torn away from her and it was like her capacity to care about it had been taken at the same time. Jason had told her to sit down and told her the news. It had taken her breath away, felt like the world had been ripped out from under her feet, but even though Jason's eyes were watery she hadn't cried. She had nodded once, twice, and excused herself to go to the bathroom.

When she emerged, she had bangs.

She sat back on her heels. There. That was the last of the kitchen drawers.

The apartment was in chaos. She'd pulled every drawer out in the kitchen and removed their contents; it was all scattered around the kitchen, on the floor, the counters. All of the cabinets were open wide with their guts spilled also — every bowl and plate and cup and glass and pot and pan she and Jason owned were stacked haphazardly around the kitchen, including in the sink, and had spilled over into the living area. The dining chairs were upended on the dining table; the coffee table and the couch were askew, with a rolled-up area rug occupying the couch.

She sighed contentedly and wiped her hands on her jeans. By the time she had turned around to take the plastic cover off the tube of floral drawer liners and readied the scissors, her jeans were already lightening several shades with the bleach. Not that it mattered; she was spattered anyway and besides, half the Aphrodite girls were walking around in crazy expensive jeans that they'd paid to have someone else bleach so really she'd saved a fortune.

Her tongue was trapped between her teeth as she measured the first kitchen drawer of a liner when she heard footsteps coming down the corridor from the bedroom.

"Piper?" Jason called. "I smell bleach. This can't be good, right?"

She popped her head up over the kitchen island and spied Jason. He'd pulled on a hoodie over his bare chest and was standing in his boxers and no socks. He'd obviously just woken up; she realised that she had no idea what time it was.

"Well that depends," she said, looking up at him. "I like bleach."

"Piper, what... are you doing?" Jason asked, rubbing at his short blond hair. He was squinting in the harsh overhead lights of the kitchen.

"We didn't have any drawer or cabinet liners," Piper chirped. Then, "Duh."

"Right..." Jason said, eyes widening as the state of the apartment began to wash over him. "And the couch and the chairs?"

Piper looked up at them and blinked; she'd forgotten about those. "Oh, I'm going to give everything a really good vacuum underneath," she said. "Bust that dust."

Jason paused. "Piper, it's 4am? And… you don't clean."

"Things change, Jason," Piper said chirpily with a nonchalant shrug. "This is _spring _cleaning and it never hurts to get a head start."

"It's July?" Jason tried again, but Piper ignored him, going back to cutting her drawer liners.

"So it's late spring cleaning," she said. "What's with the twenty questions? But now you're up, though, do you think you're tall enough to unhook the drapes? Or maybe you can just float on up there and get them down for me? I'm going to take them to have them cleaned later at that place I took your suit to the other day for—" She stopped suddenly, her throat bobbing, and then shook her head vigorously, picking up the first newly-lined drawer and jamming it back into place.

"The funeral, Piper," Jason said. "You picked up my suit for the funeral. You can say it. And I told you that I probably wasn't going to wear a suit. It's… demigods don't go in for the dress up much for funerals. You know that."

"Fine, don't wear it," Piper snapped. "I just wanted you to look good but whatever."

Jason sighed, biting his lower lip, clearly wondering whether or not he should continue. "I know I keep asking, but are you sure you're okay? You've been a little... disconnected about the whole thing, you know that, right? Anyway, you can't take the drapes to the cleaners today. The funeral is in..." he broke off to check the clock on the microwave, "six hours."

"Oh, right," Piper said. "That. I'm not going." She banged open the drawer she'd replaced; it was the one used to house all of their outsize utensils, the ladles and spoons and spatulas, the rolling pin and the rest. They were all on the counter and she swept them into the open drawer in one movement. Some missed, raining down on the tiled floor and bouncing, a cacophony of crashing no doubt waking the half of the building that lived below them.

Piper made no move to pick them up, instead nudging the drawer closed. A spatula was jammed, however, and it stubbornly stayed open so Piper wrenched the offending implement out and threw it across the room. It hit a stack of bowls and dislodged the first two, sending them dashing to pieces on the floor. Ceramic shards skittered away from the point of impact like a starburst.

Jason waited for the din to die down before speaking. "You're not going?" he asked as if nothing had happened. "Piper, you _have _to go. This is his _funeral_."

"Well, did you ever think that maybe I _can't_ go, huh?" Piper demanded, rounding on Jason with her eyes alight with fury. "What about that?"

Jason gently took her hands. "Piper, look at me," he said. "You can do this. I know it will be hard but I'll be there and so will everyone else. We'll get through this. Together." He paused, turning her hands over. "Gods, Piper, what happened to your hands?"

Piper looked down. They were mottled red and white and cracked, dry from the bleach. Maybe she should have got some gloves but who had time for that? Besides, like Jason said she didn't clean (normally). She hadn't known it would get this bad.

Shaking her head, she extracted her hands from Jason and hid them up her sleeves. "Bleach," she said shortly. "Nothing kills quite like it. And I don't care how many people are there; I'm not going. If I go, he's _dead_, Jason. And he cannot be dead."

She stood up and walked to the living area, coming to rest in front of the bookcase. Jason trailed after her.

"But… he _is_ dead, Piper. I know that it sucks, but—"

Piper began to pull books off the bookcase in violent and erratic bursts, throwing them over her shoulder. They landed with thumps and wet splats on the hardwood floor, some closed, some open. Pages crumpled and spines shrieked in protest.

"You're telling me that it sucks," Piper snarled. "It feels like there is a hole inside of me, Jason. But you heard me; I _can't _go. I'm not ready to say goodbye. Maybe I've been to enough funerals this year already and I can't face any more of them. Did you think about that, huh? I am so, so _sick_ of funerals. I am too young to have gone to so many funerals. Why do I have to go to another one?" Idly, she ran a finger through the dust gathered on the shelf she'd just cleared behind the books. "They're all the same; they get wrapped up in a shroud and put on that pyre and then poof, we're all supposed to just move on with our lives?"

"Piper... please. Listen to me. Ever since... _it_ happened you've not exactly been yourself. More like Piper lite. All of the demigod but none of those pesky emotions. I don't know what to do. It's scaring me. _You're_ scaring me. I'm floundering here. I want to help, I do, but you have to let me. The funeral might help. It could—"

"Still not going," she said. "Not even if you psychoanalyse me."

"Piper—"

She grabbed almost an entire shelf of books from the shelf and handed them to Jason, who staggered in surprise under the sudden weight, cutting him off. There were no spare surfaces to put them on apart from the floor, and not even much space there.

"I really need to alphabetise these..." Piper mused as she cleared the final shelf. She considered it for a minute and then shrugged, putting in on the list for later, along with lining the rest of the drawers and tackling the family of dust bunnies under the couch.

Instead, she turned to the curtains and wrinkled her nose in thought for a couple of minutes before grabbing a chair off the dining table and dragging it over to the window. She hopped up on it and by stretching up onto her toes she could just about reach the top of the curtains, so she began to unhook them from the rod.

"I mean it, Piper," Jason said. "You're scaring me. Slow down."

"Nope," Piper said, her voice muffled around the curtain hooks she was putting in her mouth. "Not slowing down. Because then you're going to talk about the funeral some more and how I should go and I just don't want to hear that right now. I seriously cannot handle one more funeral in my life without going the kind of crazy Mr D will only wish he could fix. If I have to say goodbye to one more person…" She let it hang in the air because the truth was she didn't know what would happen. All she knew is that she was already at breaking point, having been fed on a diet of loss and the ephemerality of human life since she was sixteen.

How were you meant to live wondering if the person you were the closest to was going to be the next to die? Wondering if _you _were next? There was heat rising in her face and she bit the inside of her cheek to quell it.

"Please get down," Jason said gently. "Just wait a minute. If you would just let yourself breathe for one minute I'm sure—"

Piper snorted, spitting out curtain hooks in incredulity. "Oh sure. You Romans are such masters or your emotions, with your controlled calm and your breathing," she spat. "Well, I'm sorry but we can't all be trained by the legion and ex-praetors. In fact—"

As she worked on the drapes she had gradually leaned further and further to the right until suddenly the chair tipped and she lost her balance. She grabbed at the curtain and it was wrenched free; broken curtain hooks pinged off around the apartment and with a shriek and the sound of ripping fabric Piper tumbled from the chair.

Jason tossed all of the books he'd been holding into the air without a thought, lunging forward to catch her, but there had been no way he was going to make it in time. With an almighty crash they both wound up on the floor tangled in one of the drapes.

"Piper, are you okay?" Jason asked. "You could have killed yourself."

"I'm _fine_," she said shortly, blinking in surprise. "Damn, whoever screwed that curtain rod into the wall knew what they were doing. That thing didn't _budge._" She began to untangle herself from Jason and the curtain and the fallen chair, wincing as she got to her feet. There were going to be some huge bruises this time tomorrow. Her shins were throbbing where they'd caught the edge of the chair, so much so that she felt tears prickling at her eyes for the first time since she'd been given the news.

Bending down caused more pain but she did it anyway, reaching to pull the curtain out from underneath Jason and bundling it up. Dust flew into the air and she sneezed. "See? I told you these needed cleaning."

Dusting her hands together she turned on the spot and reached for the chair again, beginning to drag it towards the other curtain, but Jason stopped her.

"No," he said, intervening bodily between hers and the chair. "I am not going to let you break your neck over _drapes_. If you really want it done I will do it. After the funeral."

Piper's face turned mutinous and she stormed towards the kitchen. Her eyes roved over the mess she had created that was piled on the counters; she spun on the spot, surveying it all, and then her eyes alighted on a stack of plates. Grabbing the first one, she carefully placed it back in its newly-lined cupboard.

"I'm not going," she said, her voice fake sweet like saccharine and her words as slow and deliberate as the crockery stacking, "and you can't make me."

"Piper—"

"Don't _Piper _me!" she snarled, whirling around to face Jason. In her haste, she knocked a stack of glasses and sent them tumbling to the floor. The sound was deafening, bouncing off every hard surface in the kitchen and booming back at them. The glasses shattered partly to powder and the rest into broken splinters, which skimmed across the tiled floor like jet skis riding waves. "Dammit!" Piper let out a strangled and frustrated sob, shoving her stupid new bangs off her forehead again with her arm before crouching down. Slowly, she began gathering the larger shards onto half a bowl.

Jason gingerly picked his way through the minefield of broken ceramic and glass on the floor with his bare feet, at any moment ready to feel a spear of it through his sole. He managed to make his way to Piper and crouch down in front of her.

Piper just continued picking up slithers of glass, struggling to draw breath in and out as she did it. _Mess_. She had to clean this mess up, and then she had to finish the drawer and cabinet liners, and alphabetise the books, and take down the other curtain, and dust the bookcase, and vanquish the dust bunnies, and—

Jason reached forward and took her hands, gently plucking the pieces of glass and crockery she was gathering out of them and dropping them to the floor. This time she didn't react and, encouraged, he tipped her hand sideways, sending a cascade of broken glass and bowl to the floor.

"Piper," he said again quietly, bumping his forehead into her. "_Piper_. Please. Just let me in."

There was a pause in which the silence clamoured around then and then Piper sat back hard on her heels and sobbed, her chest hitching. She put one hand to her mouth and let Jason keep the other one; he was rubbing soothing circles on her raw palm with his thumb. The tears that hadn't come over the past few days finally arrived and she felt them hot and prickling in her eyes before spilling over her cheeks, rolling down her face.

"He's _dead_," Piper said, her voice more of a primal howl than anything human. "I'm sorry, Jason, but he is _dead _and I just... _can't_."

Piper dissolved into a fit of ugly sobs which wracked her body like spasms. Her nose ran. Her eyes burned and she couldn't stop her chest snagging as she hiccupped out more sobs. She was probably the ugliest crier the Aphrodite cabin had ever seen.

"I know," Jason said, and he was making shushing noises. She flung herself forwards at him and together they rocked on the cold floor, surrounded by glass shards glimmering like tropical fish on the dark tile beneath the harsh fluorescent light.

This was it. He was dead and the universe didn't even care that she'd been to enough funerals in her short life, that they'd _all_ been to enough funerals in the past ten years to last a thousand lifetimes, because now she was going to have to go to one more.

They had gone on their first quest together and been inducted into the world of demigods together. He had been her first true friend in the longest time, always ready with a smartass comment or one of his cobbled-together contraptions to cheer her up if she ever felt low.

He had been taken from them in a random monster attack despite having survived the Titan War and countless explosions in Bunker 9 that would have killed anyone else; all it had taken was one _stupid_ sword strike in the dark, before he would even have had chance to defend himself, and that was it.

It made Piper angry, the more she thought about it. He was the best of heroes and if he had to go he deserved to do so in a blaze (literally) of glory, not… a shot in the dark. The best of heroes had died the smallest of deaths.

She remembered his impish smile burning through the smoky forges, could practically see the grease stains on his cheek and forehead the last time she had seen him.

There was a wound inside her where he'd been ripped from and she was suddenly acutely aware of how much it hurt, how large his absence was. She hadn't let herself feel it before, hadn't been willing to accept it, which is why these were her first tears since Jason had told her.

"You must think I've been a real bitch," Piper said, managing to squeeze in words between the sobs even if they were muffled in Jason's shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"Piper, it's okay," Jason said. "People process differently. I get it."

Piper swallowed some sobs, choking on them. Her voice was wavering and thick when she spoke again. "I just… I can't believe that he's dead. How am I mean to deal with that? He was here and now he's not and I just can't make it seem real. Out of all of us, he had the most… _life_. You know? Energy. _Spark. _And now… I can't believe he's not here anymore. I keep expecting him to walk in the door or call in the middle of the night to tell me about his latest insane idea and… yeah. Now he's never going to do that again."

"I know," Jason said again. "I can't believe it either. Still."

"I don't want him to be dead," Piper said in a small voice. "Why does he have to be dead?"

Jason sighed and smoothed her hair. "I keep asking myself the same question," he said.

As they crouched on the kitchen floor the overhead lights became less pronounced as the sky outside took on the first grey tinges of dawn. Slowly, the first flush of pink crept through the horizon, rinsing away New York City's garish orange stain of light pollution. The windows stopped being reflective as the sun made its first tentative approach, golden-orange light creeping across the floor and sending the shattered glass winking like diamonds, like the stars the city's lights blotted form the sky.

Another late July day was being born, as hot and sultry and humid as the ones that had gone before, and the ones that would come after.

And yet just four days ago, Leo had seen his last.

Piper sat there on the kitchen floor and prayed that one day there'd be a sunrise when the weight of loss wasn't threatening to suffocate her, that maybe one day there'd be a dawn where she'd once again feel whole.


End file.
